


You Could Make Soup

by 0Rocky41_7



Series: FrUK oneshots [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, FrUKnewyears2015, Het fruk, Human AU, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Rocky41_7/pseuds/0Rocky41_7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne is still reeling from the accident four months earlier that took her sight, and Arthur is trying to bring her back into life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Could Make Soup

 "I'm home, love," Arthur called as he entered the apartment, arms full of groceries. As had become the usual, there was no answer from the tall-backed blue armchair in the corner of the living room. He didn't have to go look to know Marianne was there. She practically lived there these days. "It's a lovely day out," he went on with forced optimism, as if she wasn't willfully ignoring him. "You could go for a walk."

                "Into a pole?" was the scornful reply. He winced inwardly. He did sympathize with Marianne and he understood her current behavior but that didn't make it any less frustrating after four months. He of all people knew how long she could sulk. Usually he could cave in, or compromise, or distract her to make her come out of it, but this time, he was quite incapable of giving her what she wanted, no matter how eagerly he would have done so, were it in his power.

                "I had another idea," he called from the kitchen as he began to unload the groceries. This was something he'd thought about quite a bit, but was tentative to suggest, as he feared it would be immediately shot down. Marianne seemed to take vindictive pleasure in shooting down his ideas these days, though the therapist assured him that was normal. It wasn't Arthur she was angry with, he was just the nearest and only target for her bitterness.

                Again, there was no answer.

                When he had finished putting everything away, he went out to stand in the living room. The heavy curtains were closed and Marianne was staring blankly at the wall. The remote had been flung onto the couch and the TV was off; she had one leg crooked under her and the other hanging off the edge of the seat.

                Even now, with her hair falling out of a clumsy bun she’d attempted and no make-up on her face, dressed in baggy clothing, he was taken aback by her beauty. His chest ached again to see her jaw set the way it was, knowing she was so unhappy. Once he had relished in seeing her angry, but nowadays he would’ve done anything to soothe the furrow in her brow. If only his love for her counted for something in the universe. It hardly even seemed to count to Marianne anymore.

                "I thought you could make lunch today," Arthur suggested softly. He could _feel_ Marianne's rejection of the idea before she even spoke.

                "Are you crazy, or do you want me to burn the apartment down and take us with it?" she asked bitingly. Arthur closed his eyes a moment, but this time, he was going to try to insist. She _needed_ to do something; she was just sitting in this armchair wasting away and it was killing him, watching her become this hardened shell of what she used to be. Marianne, who was beauty and grace and sweetness and haughtiness and so many wonderful, annoying things, all mixed together like a kaleidoscope. And now...she was becoming hollow and empty, a prisoner to her own grief and anger. It just _killed_ him. He went over and knelt down in front of her.

                "Anne, please," he said, reaching out to take her hands. "You have to try something sometime," he said.

                "I don't have to do anything," she said with a flash of that stubborn streak that had made them clash so much when they first met. He loved it as much as he hated it, and knew he had the same tendency.

                " _Please_ my love," he tried again, squeezing her hands. "Just give it a try. I'll be with you. I'll make sure nothing happens." She whipped her head around to look at him, her milky blue eyes glaring daggers at him in a way that made any person quail.

                "Yes, because what I want is for you to _babysit_ me in my _own_ domain!" she snarled, trying to pull her hands away.

                "Marianne, you can't just sit in this armchair for the rest of your life!" he said, raising his voice a little. He had tried so hard to be patient with her, but he was starting to think what she really needed was tough love, and that was the kind he was best at giving. "You have to _do_ something!"

                "Or _what?_ " she demanded. "You'll leave? Go ahead." She turned her face away again and he could tell by the set of her jaw the remark was fueled by the genuine fear that someday he _would_ get tired of her behavior and leave.

                "No, I'm not going to leave, but do you really want to spend the rest of your life sitting in this chair being angry with the world?" he snapped back. "Is it that fulfilling?"

                "Leave me alone," she replied listlessly.

                "No, dammit! Get up and do something!" he said. "Yes, a terrible thing happened to you! But that doesn't mean you're reduced to permanent immobility and inactivity!" He knew he couldn't push her too hard, or she'd resist not simply because she didn't want to do whatever he wanted her to, but because he was pushing her. So, feeling that he had pushed as hard as he could, he returned to a more gentle approach. "At least come look at what I--"

                "Is that supposed to be a _pun_?" she asked, glaring at him again. Even unseeing, her glares were something fearsome.

                "You look in your own way," he dodged. "At least come examine what I got."

                "I can't," she said flatly.

                "You _can_ ," he pressed. "You can smell and taste and feel—do you mean to tell me all those things are useless just because you can't see?" Marianne was silent and Arthur knew he'd wedged a foot in the door. "You learned to find your way around the apartment," he went on. "You can learn this too. It won't be just like it was before, but you have time. You can do it, you're far too stubborn not to learn once you commit yourself to something." Continued silence. "Are you going to tell me you didn't know I put far too much paprika in the curry on Tuesday?" he asked her, appealing to her pride as a cook and love of insulting his lack of cooking skills (a couple years of living with Marianne forced him to admit she was in a whole other plane of existence when it came to cooking).

                "You did," she agreed. Her voice was deceptively flat, but he could hear the slight inflection that meant she wasn't as disinterested as she was leading him to believe.

                "And you know how to do it better," he urged. He was willing, this one time, to throw his own cooking under the bus to get Marianne back in the kitchen. She was silent, but he could see on her face that she was contemplating it. "Come look at the ingredients," he tried again, rising up and tugging her hands lightly, trying to get her to her feet. Slowly, she rose up as well. She unfurled, as graceful as ever, like a waking cat or a flower greeting the morning sun. He so wanted to take her into his arms and hold her again, but she'd been so cold and distant lately, he didn't dare. He had a goal right now and personal affection had to wait. She let him lead her into the kitchen, shuffling backwards and watching her slowed steps. She'd been in the apartment long enough to have more or less learned where the furniture was and how to avoid it, but she was still slower and more cautious than when she'd been sighted.

                Still, she followed and he let go of her hands when she was standing in front of the counter. Almost warily, she reached out and began to touch and feel what he'd brought home.

                "I thought maybe French onion soup or something, since you like that so much," Arthur suggested hesitantly, watching Marianne run her hands over the groceries spread out on the counter.

                "Did you buy onions?" she asked in that voice that told him she'd already noticed a mistake and was guiding him towards seeing it himself.

                "Here," he said, producing a vegetable and pressing it against her palm. Arthur, the quintessential bulldog, was hardly cowed by anything. But in light of Marianne's vast, intimidating expertise in the kitchen, he quailed like a child. Indeed, while a moment ago he had been so certain in the onion-ness of the onions, he now was second-guessing himself and Marianne's expression told him he was right to do so. But, unlike other times, this time, he felt a spark of hope and even happiness, because the expression was so Marianne and she hadn't been herself in so long now.

                "Arthur," she said, a typical hint of loving exasperation and even amusement in her voice, "these are _shallots_ , cher." He took a closer look and realized they were indeed, shallots. Marianne had caught without sight what he had failed to notice in full light of the supermarket. Well if that wasn't enough to make him feel a bit foolish.

                "Oh." She wasn't smiling, as she might've before, but this was the closest he'd seen her in months and he'd gladly take it over another day of black brooding in the blue armchair. "Ah...maybe something else then," he said.

                "I could make..." Her hands brushed over the groceries again, laying the shallot down. She'd said _I could_. That brief, tiny phrase felt like an enormous, hard-fought victory for Arthur, so much did it differ from her narrative of late. I could. He savored the phrase and tucked it away for later contemplation. "Maybe sandwiches and salad..."

                "That sounds perfect," he encouraged, trying not to sound too eager, lest he scare her away from the idea altogether. The more she thought it was her idea and her choice, the more open she'd be to it. Marianne was silent for a time and Arthur fancied he could see uncertainty in her eyes, dulled as her expressions that way were.

                "Oui," she murmured to herself, reaching out towards the wall, feeling for the bread box. "Je peux...je peux...des sandwiches...." Arthur waited with baited breath, not daring to speak or make any suggestions. She found the bread box and slid it open, taking out what was inside to give it a squeeze and test for freshness. "Do we have tomatoes?" she asked him in a firmer voice and he was sure he'd almost won.

                "Yes!" he answered promptly and if they didn't, he'd run back down to the store right now to get some before this wave of motivation passed. He jerked open the fridge and dug around until he produced two slightly wilted tomatoes, which he presented to her. Marianne frowned on feeling the excessive softness, but she didn't outright reject them. She missed cooking, Arthur felt sure of that. She wanted to do it again, she just had this terrible (though justified) mental block towards doing it again.

                "I suppose...I could work with these..." she said reluctantly, displaying her usual aversion to using anything but the very best ingredients in everything she did. But she seemed to sense, as he did, that this moment of motivation could be fleeting, and wanted to get to work before it passed.

                "I could run out and buy you some fresher ones," he offered, deciding to put it out that he was willing to, if she really didn't want to work with the soft tomatoes.

                "No...no that's fine," she said, shaking her head and Arthur contemplated going back to church. He almost wished he'd made this attempt to get her to cook earlier, but honestly he wasn't sure she'd even be this far if he'd tried it sooner. She needed to be ready. "Could you hand me a knife?" He reached for her butcher block and plucked one at random. Marianne ran her hand along the spine and thrust it back so that Arthur leaped backwards. "A smaller one," she said.

                "Careful with that," he warned, taking it delicately and swapping it for a different one. Marianne had a whole set of glossy-handled black knives her father had given her as a Christmas gift one year and she treasured them above all else in her kitchen. Arthur wasn't even allowed to use them after she'd seen how he blunted the blades after just a month of living together. That had been one of their bigger fights because she'd gotten completely hysterical about his abuse of her precious knives and Arthur had told her she was ridiculously overreacting and they'd both wondered if they weren't patently insane for trying to be together. But, as with all their fights, they got over it.

                "I know what I'm doing," she said, setting the knife aside and feeling around for the cutting board.

                "I meant with me," he said, reaching out to hand the cutting board to her and then stopping. As much as he might want to, babying her was not going to help her. She could find it on her own, she wasn't too far off right now. She got ahold of it and proceeded to nearly give him a heart attack watching her try to core the first tomato. Sure enough, her hand slipped and she laid her finger right open.

                "Aie!" She wrung her hand, flicking blood over the counter, and moved to the sink to rinse it off. Being such an experienced cook, she was used to injury at the hands of her instruments, but she was also used to being able to look at a wound and gauge the severity.

                "Let me see it!" Arthur hurried over and grabbed her wrist to have a look. It wasn't terribly bad. "Let me get you a bandage." Marianne sighed but let him clean it up and wrap a Band-Aid around it. "I should've cored them first," he fretted as he wrapped her finger up. "That knife is too big for you to be using."

                "Oh Arthur, really," Marianne tched. "You can't tell me I can do this and then set about telling me exactly why I can't. I've had cuts like this a million times before. I didn't learn to chop so fast with no injuries." The fact that she was arguing to be allowed to do it spoke volumes though and he was torn between joy that she was showing true interest in one of her old hobbies and anxiety that she'd hurt herself again.

                "Just let me do this one thing," he tried again.

                "No," she said, her lower lip getting the stubborn thrust to it that he'd begun to find so cute when they argued. That thought that had first begun to betray him in their fierce rivalry after friends had mistakenly introduced them to each other with the idea that they would not, in fact, passionately hate and despise each other. But once he noticed that pouting lower lip, everything else began to crumble away until all that was left was a love for her just as fierce and strong as his previous loathing had been. How many nights had he thought of what it would be like to kiss those lips? To wipe that sour look from her face and make her smile? Oh, but he was getting distracted now and she was talking. "...either let me do everything or just do it yourself!" While he'd missed the first part of what he was sure had been an excellent argument, she did sum it up nicely at the end so he could feign like he hadn't been spacing out.

                "If you insist," he said, patting her hand a little. "Just...be careful, okay?" Speaking of memories, he also hadn't forgotten the last time she'd been injured. Hadn't forgotten the phone call coming in while he was working on his laptop at home, hadn't forgotten the way the sound seemed to cut out from the world, like someone had punched the mute button. He hadn't forgotten the hasty rush to the hospital, the speeding, the way the nurses’ mouths moved while no words seemed to reach his ears. Emma, weeping profusely in the hall with a bloodied bandage around her head, gesturing to one of the patient rooms and blubbering apologies. And Marianne, unconscious, her eyes covered up by a bandage. Her hand, making its first feeble groping towards the edge of the bed.

    There was no reason for the bandages where they were, the doctors told him. The damage had been done to her occipital lobe, in the back of her head. Her eyes were fine, it was her brain that no longer functioned to give her sight. The bandages were so that when she first woke, she might assume that was the reason for her lack of sight, instead of immediately panicking because she couldn't see. It could be explained to her, once she'd regained consciousness and understood what had happened.

    Arthur tore himself away from those painful memories of that summer and refocused on Marianne, who was peaceably cutting tomatoes at the counter. It was so painfully normal, yet had been so absent from their lives. It used to be that he'd see her here every night, because no matter how tired Marianne was after work, she was never too tired to cook. Rather than draining her of more energy, as it did for him, she was revived by it. The order of the kitchen, her absolute control over her domain, gave her comfort and relaxed her. Arthur made himself a cup of tea and continued to watch her. Halfway through the second tomato, she cast down the knife in frustration, growling something in French that he didn't catch (it had been years since he'd taken it in school and his comprehension was abysmal).

    "What's wrong love?" he asked, unable to understand what had gone wrong. She hadn't cut herself again; he had the first aid kit on hand in case she did.

    "It's taking so long!" she snarled, her jaw working agitatedly. "I could slice faster than that when I had five years!" The slight slip-up in her English was another sign of her frustration.

    “Marianne, calm down,” he said, reaching out for her wrists, lest she give another worked up flail and hurt herself once more with the knife. “Did you really think you’d be able to jump back into like you used to?” Her mouth worked and he knew how tense she was. Gently, he moved his hands up to her upper arms and pulled her a little closer. “It will take time, dear,” he soothed softly. “You’ll have to learn to do things a different way. But I _know_ you can. You’re much too stubborn not to persevere,” he said with a little smile.

    Marianne was rigid in his arms and he dared to rub her back lightly. He was hardly an overtly affectionate person himself, but Marianne’s lack of reception towards it lately, when she had formerly been so eager to accept his meager displays of affection, had made him even more hesitant. Gradually, though, she relaxed rather than pulling away. A sight tremor went through her and he tightened his grip around her, breathing in the smell of the lavender soap that she loved so much. He’d grown to love it too; whenever she’d been away, he would press his face into the crook of her neck when he hugged her, to smell that familiar scent. It always reminded him of her now, whenever he caught wind of it.

    “I shouldn’t _have_ to,” she whispered, one hand curling up into a fist.

    “I know,” he murmured, feeling her muscles unclench and pulling her fully against him. “It’s unfair.”

    “It is,” she agreed, hesitating a moment more and then leaning her forehead against his shoulder. She didn’t want anything inspirational right now, she just wanted sympathy.

    “But you can do it,” he told her again. “You learned it once, you can learn it again. You know you can, Marianne.”

    “It’s so much work,” she whined in a quiet breath. “I did all this already…I shouldn’t have to do it again!”

    “I know,” he repeated. “But aren’t you bored of just sitting around doing nothing? Don’t you _want_ to do something again?” She was quiet, but then pulled away from his grasp and turned to the counter again. While he regretted the loss of closeness, he was relieved to see her try again.

    “Would you put on music?” she asked after several more minutes of Arthur sitting in silence at the small kitchen table, watching her cut vegetables.

    “Sure.” He got up and put on one of her favorite Edith Piaf CDs (though not her most favorite, which she had hurled at his head some weeks ago and broken, which made her cry). He thought he saw her shoulders relax slightly when the familiar warbling of the long-dead singer filled the stale air of the kitchen.

    Arthur’s mind drifted again while he watched her, but she made no more complaints until she needed condiments. She had to tell Arthur what to take out for her and then apply carefully. Arthur didn’t mention that she’d put far too much mustard on one of them. They sat down to eat and after a couple bites, Marianne suddenly made a sound that was something like laughter and put her sandwich down, shaking her head. She half sounded like she might be crying.

    “Are you okay?” Arthur asked. “What’s wrong?”

    “This is the worst sandwich I’ve ever made,” she said, and when she raised her head he saw she really was laughing. “It’s awful!”

    Arthur just watched her for a moment, trying to decide how he was supposed to respond. Should he laugh too, or would that offend her, to think he agreed and that her sandwich was awful? Or would she be more offended by his remaining silent, thinking that he was trying to patronize her by sparing her feelings? In the end, he told her the truth.

    “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” he said. She fell silent and gave him that look that said _Oh, Arthur_ so clearly even though once he’d gotten mad and snapped at her to stop saying that like he was some pitiable three-legged kitten who’d fallen on his face in the mud trying to catch a mouse. So she mostly stopped saying it, but in its place she had a look that said as much as the phrase ever did.

    “That is because, Arthur, when I’m out of the kitchen we end up with things like _Mush!_ in our cupboards,” she said.

    “There’s nothing wrong with my food!” he argued. Trust mocking his cooking and British cuisine to be the thing that brought her temporarily out her slump.

    “Whatever you say, cher,” she said in a dismissive voice. Arthur frowned, but this time got no jokes about his eyebrows looking like caterpillars when they knit together. Good God, was he really nostalgic for Marianne’s mockery? There was a murmur in his head that told him he’d gladly take all the mockery she could give to make things go back to the way they used to be. She took another bite and gave her sandwich a reproving look, as though she could blame _it_ for not tasting the way it ought to, but kept eating.

    “I saw Feliciano on the way home from work today,” he remarked to the silence. Marianne paused in her eating and he knew she was listening.

    “How is he?” Feliciano, Marianne’s much younger brother, worked at a floral shop in the same town where they lived. He hadn’t seen her since she’d gotten out of the hospital. Listening to her voice, though, Arthur could hear a tense note in her voice; she was worried she’d pushed him away too much.

    “He’s well,” Arthur soothed her. “He hopes you’re doing better and he’d love to talk on the phone sometime, if you like.” To his surprise, Marianne nodded slowly

    “Yes…yes, I should call him…” She tapped thoughtfully on her sandwich with one finger.

    “I know he’d love to hear from you,” Arthur couldn’t help adding. Anyone would love to hear from Marianne; she’d become a total recluse since the accident. She nodded again, distantly.

    “I’ll call him,” she promised. They lapsed into silence, but somehow, it was more comfortable than it had been of late. Arthur couldn’t feel the waves of bitterness and resentment radiating off Marianne from across the table. Her silence wasn’t the sullen sort. They were used to being quiet together; it was something they were comfortable with. They could spend a whole Saturday in the living room with Marianne drawing and Arthur reading, not saying a word, and come away feeling that they’d spent the day together.

    When she was done, she got to her feet. She took her empty plate into the kitchen and Arthur finished off the rest of his sandwich and followed her.

    “Let me help you with the dishes,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. It was just an innocuous comment, but as soon as he made it he was holding his breath, lest she take it as an implication he thought she couldn’t do it herself.

    “I won’t argue with that,” was what she said, turning on the water. Arthur let out a silent breath of relief and they got to work, soapy water reaching up their arms. When they were done, Arthur thought of before, and couldn’t resist sliding an arm around Marianne’s waist and kissing her cheek.

    “I never thought I’d miss doing the dishes with you,” he said. She looked away and he thought he caught a flash of guilt on her face.

    “I should put away the vegetables,” she said, starting to peel away from his arm.

    “I’ll get them later,” he said, pulling her closer. It had been far too long since he’d gotten to pay her any sort of physical affection that she didn’t brush off. He gazed at her a moment in silence and he could tell she was trying to decide what to do. He tilted her face up gently and ran a hand along her jawline. When she didn’t pull away or tell him to stop, he leaned in and kissed her. It felt like he was filling some hole that had been aching in his chest for months. Kissing Marianne always seemed to make everything better, no matter what was wrong. “Come sit on the couch with me,” he said, pulling back. He wasn’t going to press her to anything more, but it had been ages since he’d just gotten to sit and hold her.

    “…alright,” she said after a moment of hesitation. He walked slowly to keep pace with Marianne and they settled on the couch, Arthur stretched out on the cushions and Marianne lying on top of him with her head on his chest. For a few minutes, they just lay in silence. Arthur carefully worked Marianne’s hair out of the clumsy bun and stroked the freed waves of soft brown locks.

    “I’m glad you made lunch today,” he said after a while. Marianne didn’t respond. It seemed like she was going to pretend he hadn’t said anything at all, until she finally spoke.

    “Just for you, mon lapin.” She felt guilty for treating him the way she had and this was some loose form of an apology. Fortunately Arthur was used to both of them being stiff-necked and proud, so he could recognize her attempt to patch things up, at least in regards to earlier today.

    “I’ve missed hearing that from you,” he said softly, brushing her hair away from her neck. Marianne’s hand rubbed a couple little circles on his side. Again, there was an extended silence.

    “My little bunny,” she murmured, breaking it. She nestled her head more comfortably on his chest. He felt another twinge in his heart, hearing that again. It had been so long, but Marianne loved to do that—call him hers. Her pet names were almost always accompanied by a “my”. He wouldn’t even protest any more: he belonged to her. “You haven’t gotten nearly enough attention lately.” At least not the good kind. “Quel tragedie.”

    “I’ve practically wasted away,” he said, mocking her overdramatic reactions to everyday frustrations. She pinched him in response. “Ow! I think you owe me a kiss for that.” It slipped out, because it was something he’d have said before, when she was free with her affection, but now he regretted saying it, not sure how she’d react. There was another pause and then she shifted, pushing herself up off of him. She looked down at him and he could see the nearly invisible signs of frustration on her face because she was looking for something she’d never see again, as though straining in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust even though it would never happen.

    He took her hand, carefully taking it off the couch so she had time to shift her weight to her other hand, and raised it to his lips to kiss. Her fingers spread out over his face, tracing along his chin and mouth.

    “I still love you,” she whispered leaning in and kissing him. It was slightly clumsy at first as she felt him out, but she relaxed into it once she had the right position.

    “I should hope so,” Arthur replied quietly when she drew away enough for them to breathe. “I fear I truly would perish anymore without your affection.” He brushed some hair out of her face and trailed his fingers down the curve of her graceful neck.

    “Even if you don’t see it all the time…” She bit her lip and again he saw her eyes scrunch slightly. “It’s still there.”

    “For a thousand years?” he asked, plucking an old idiom of theirs, inspired by a song Marianne had made him listen to on her iPod once.

    “For a thousand more,” she promised, and a faint little smile ghosted across her lips. And for now, for Arthur, that was enough. She settled back down on his chest and he went back to stroking her hair, and they fell asleep there for the rest of the evening. It was, Arthur thought, a very good day.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my entry for tumblr's 2015 Secret Santa/New Years' FrUK exchange! My request was for England and fem!France cooking together/general fluffiness. I think I may have failed a bit on the fluff part, but I did get the cooking in there!
> 
>  
> 
> [On tumblr](http://imakemywings.tumblr.com/post/108206829300/you-could-make-soup)


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